The movie, "Avengers: Endgame" has not even been out a week, but many people that I know have already seen it twice.
Let me repeat that part.
Many that I know have already seen it twice.
That includes me.
When Kevin and I saw it on "Tina Tuesday", we had missed the first part.
Tonight, I had gone again to discover how much we missed.
Fortunately, that initial segment was only a few minutes...
but it had been critical for understanding Hawkeye's grief response.
Everyone handles the death of a loved one differently, not only in the real world, but also in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
That includes the Avengers, who with the exception of Thor, are mere mortals like us.
Yes, Carol Danvers has Kree blood coursing through her veins, but her mind and her emotional responses are still 100% terran human.
Yes, Rocket and Nebula and Steve Rogers and Tony Stark and Bruce Banner have had technological wonders incorporated into their bodies, but their minds and emotional responses are still those of rational beings.
As for Natasha Romanova and James Rhodes and Clint Barton and Okoye, no modifications have been made to their bodies. Every bit of them is Earth human.
Of particular interest to me is this: having technological enhancements or being a god did not prevent them from experiencing the grief process.
Honestly, this would be an excellent doctoral thesis topic for a psychology major.
I am not such a person, but I have (far too) much experience with the death of loved ones, especially with those deaths which have come swiftly and early and unexpectedly over this past decade.
That means I am well acquainted with the five-year mark for grieving, including how that process pertains to the death of marriage.
Loss adjustment is a path trod differently by each who grieves.
Most of the reason I so enjoy film is exposure to the stories of others, to their handling of life's changes, to their techniques of loss adjustment.
As I told Kevin, the more I think about "Avengers: Endgame", the more I appreciate how it handled grief, especially the importance of the five-year mark.
The truth is, grief endures forever.
The response to that grief does change with time, with certain time passages carrying special importance for the continuing adjustment to loss.
When this latest MCU movie begins, it is the day that Thanos wreaked his will on life-bearing planets everywhere, not just on Earth. Clint Barton is enjoying a day with his family, teaching archery to his daughter, waiting while his wife sets up the picnic luncheon. Then, justthatfast, they are all vanished. His wife, his three sons, his daughter - gone, with no last words, no last hugs, just gone.
The scene then shifts. Twenty-three days have passed since half of Earth's population was changed to a whisper of dust. Captain Marvel returns to Earth, bringing the stranded spaceship containing Nebula and Tony Stark. Nebula reveals the location of Thanos and they set out to reclaim the stones from him, to revert the damage he wrought. But he has destroyed the stones, a feat which nearly destroyed him. In a typical impetuous moment, Thor attacks Thanos... and unexpectedly kills him.
Henceforth, the world must turn in its new form, heartsick Avengers and all.
The scene then shifts to five years later.
Thor had been consumed by guilt as well as grief, turning to alcohol and food to fill the hole in his heart. The resultant dramatic change in his appearance shocked the young, inexperienced viewers into laughter. He had become unkempt, allowing his beard to bush out and his hair to become matted, but the largest change had been the great increase in the size of his belly.
I doubt any in the audience had the thought: If grief could cause this change to a god, what might be the effect on mortals?
(By the way, I fully support Thor's decision at the movie's end. As his mother had told him, he must be true to the man he is, not the man he should be.)
What had befallen Clint Barton during those five years?
Rage and despair were his ruling emotions and vengeance was his reason d'etre.
When he had discovered that the random death dealt by Thanos had allowed evildoers to still live, the injustice overwhelmed him. He made it his task to obliterate them, not into the dust which had been his family's fate, but into bloody piles of corpses everywhere he trod, all around the globe. Hawkeye isolated himself from the other Avengers, preferring a life alone to a life that might suffer more loss.
His choice to go solo was hardest on his best friend and former lover, Natasha Romanova. She was deeply saddened by the loss of other Avengers, her newfound 'family', as well as by the path Hawkeye was following. She chose to act as mother hen to those remaining, holding information-sharing sessions to try to maintain some sense of control. However, she was micromanaging every little thing. At one point, she was told about an earthquake under the ocean and she asked what was going to be done about it. The Black Widow was accustomed to having tight control... the new world did not have a place for that function.
Carol Danvers was one who was not willing to be 'managed'. As Captain Marvel, she had the onerous task of trying to counter the chaos wreaked on all other life-bearing planets everywhere. The Avengers were concentrating on Earth, only Earth. Danvers finally had enough and left.
That was just as well, really. She'd had twenty-plus years of friendship with Nick Fury, as well as that many years reunited with her best friend and "Captain Trouble", watching as they aged and she had not. For them to have been turned to dust justthatfast had made a deep wound to her heart. She had responded with an immediate change: a shorter hair cut, something that she could see reflected back to her to let her know that change had come, change that she could control.
So, after five years, Captain Marvel had left Earth in the Avengers' hands.
Tony Stark had also left the Avengers. When he had been returned to Earth after three weeks stranded infrom space, he had immediately been reunited with his lady love, Pepper Potts, also a survivor of Thanos' random death machine. Granted this miracle - and bereft at the loss of Peter Parker during the 'vanishing' of populace - Ironman vowed to enjoy his second chance at happiness. He and Pepper went off into the world, to find a restful spot and have a family... and that's what exactly what they did for those five years.
Bruce Banner had also left the Avengers and gone off on his own. Too many decades of fighting with himself had taken a toll. He didn't feel able to help others heal until he could heal himself. During those five years of relative peace on Earth, he worked on merging the doctor and the Hulk into a cohesive oneness.
What about Rocket and Nebula? As the sole remaining representatives of the Guardians of the Galaxy, they were both rather isolated from the others. Rocket had lost the only 'family' he'd ever known and was willing to work with the Avengers in any capacity if it might bring them back. He'd been doing so for five years, waiting, waiting, waiting.
Nebula had lost her sister and her father. Neither would ever be returning. Thanos - her father - had killed Gamora prior to his perpetration of "the realignment", as he called it. Then, Thor had slain Thanos. Regaining the stones and returning the 'vanished' peoples to the Earth and other planets would not help her situation at all. Mostly, she waited for the return of the Guardians, to regain that semblance of 'family'.
What about Rhodes and Okoye?
Both were inured to the ravages of war. Both were soldiers who had sworn allegiance to this new paradigm, willing to do whatever was needed by the Avengers and Romanova. For the elapsed five years, they had been marking time, hoping for change but accepting of these new circumstances.
So, that takes care of all of those left behind...
all except Steve Rogers.
Then again, he had been in mourning ever since he had returned to life and found his lady love had been aging all of those years without him. That had been seventy years after his plane went into an icy lake. Seventy years.
Sure, he missed his best friends, Sam Wilson (Falcon) and Bucky Barnes (The Winter Soldier), both victims of the 'vanishing'. However, his heart still ached for the life he had hoped for with Margaret "Peggy" Carter.
After all these years, he had become adept at hiding his own heartache by helping others recover from their own. Thanks to his training in promotional speech, Captain America was able to talk the talk to inspire those around him, helping to bolster spirits during this five years of massive loss by all.
(I fully support his decision at the movie's end, too.)
My thanks to Stan Lee and Jack Kirby and Jim Starlin for these inspirational characters.
My thanks to Christopher Markus and Steven McFeely for an excellent screenplay and to Anthony and Joseph Russo for bringing it to life in a coherent manner.
I'm not sure if I will ever see the movie again, as it is etched into my mind.
Maybe, someday, I'll even write about the difficulty the left behind characters will face in the again changed world at the movie's end.
Maybe.
It's a bit heartbreaking, too.
No comments:
Post a Comment